Paw Paw Tunnel
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Tunnel entrance
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| Overview | |
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| Location | Allegany County, Maryland |
| Coordinates | 39°33′20″N 78°27′46″W / 39.555556°N 78.462778°WCoordinates: 39°33′20″N 78°27′46″W / 39.555556°N 78.462778°W |
| Operation | |
| Work begun | June 1836 |
| Opened | 1850 |
| Owner | National Park Service |
| Traffic | Canal and towpath/trail |
| Character | Boats, pedestrians, wheelchairs, bicycles, horses |
| Technical | |
| Length | 3,118 feet (950 m) |
| Tunnel clearance | 24 feet (7.3 m) |
| Width | 27 feet (8.2 m) |
 Paw Paw Tunnel
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The Paw Paw Tunnel is a 3,118-foot-long (950 m) canal tunnel on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O) in Allegany County, Maryland. Located near Paw Paw, West Virginia, it was built to bypass the Paw Paw Bends, a six-mile (9.7 km) stretch of the Potomac River containing five horseshoe-shaped bends. The town, the bends, and the tunnel take their name from the pawpaw trees that grow prolifically along nearby ridges.
The project began in 1836 with scheduled completion in two years, but there were many difficulties in the process of construction. The construction company seriously underestimated the difficulty of the job, violence frequently broke out between immigrant laborers of different ethnicities, and wages were often unpaid due to the company's financial problems. The tunnel was finally completed but it nearly bankrupted the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. The lengthy construction and high cost forced the company to end canal construction at Cumberland, Maryland, in 1850, rather than continue to Pittsburgh as originally planned.
The tunnel was used by canal boats until the C&O closed in 1924. The tunnel and towpath are now maintained for public use as part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park. Though never one of the longest tunnels in the world, Paw Paw Tunnel remains one of the greatest engineering feats of its day.
At Paw Paw, the canal engineers had a quandary with no easy solutions: follow the river (with its cliffs which would have required crossing over to West Virginia, damming the river to make a slackwater, and hacking out from the cliffs on the Maryland side) or make a tunnel. The newly appointed engineer, Charles B. Fisk, managed to convince the board of directors of a tunnel's superiority. The tunnel plan was approved in February 1836, with an expected completion date of July 1838.
Lee Montgomery, a Methodist minister who had experience from building the canal tunnel for the Union Canal was awarded the contract on March 15, 1836. Construction on the tunnel began in 1836. Unfortunately for Montgomery, the Irish workers were not skilled at tunnel work, so he obtained English masons, English and Welsh miners, and some "Dutch" [i.e. German] labourers. More unfortunately, this caused ethnic tensions which exploded into violence in 1837 and 1838, specifically between the Irish and everyone else; rioters destroyed the tavern at Oldtown, burned shanties, and the like. There were more riots in 1839 at Little Orleans. Montgomery succeeded in boring the tunnel through on June 5, 1840, at a point 1,505 feet (459 m) from the south portal, but did not finish it.
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